1. Field of the invention
The present invention relates to a hospital bed apparatus, more particularly one, which can be used to turn and reposition a patient on the hospital bed plus shift the patient from the currently used hospital bed to another, thus reducing discomfort resulting from lying on the hospital bed for a long length of time as well as reducing inconvenience resulting from manually shifting the patient.
2. Brief Description of the Prior Art
Those people who have to sit or lie in one position for a long length of time might get pressure sores, which are areas of injured skin and tissue. Sitting or lying in one position for too long puts pressure on certain areas of the body. The pressure can reduce the blood supply to the skin and the tissues under the skin. When a change in position doesn't occur often enough and the blood supply gets too low, a sore may form.
Severely disabled people such as those suffering from pathological change in central nervous system and severe stroke are prone to get pressure sores because they can't shift their position by themselves. Consequently, other persons have to shift the patients' position often so as to prevent the patients from getting pressure sores because of lying in one position for too long. Shifting a severely disabled patient's position would be a very difficult and strenuous task.
Furthermore, it is also relatively difficult and strenuous to shift a severely disabled patient from the hospital bed to another bed used with medical examination apparatuses when they have to be examined with the medical examination apparatuses such as tomography scanners, and magnetic resonance imaging devices (MRI). The patients and even the caregivers might get injured in such shifting if the caregivers fail to move and exert force properly.
Therefore, the medical apparatus industry developed various systems for shifting patients from a hospital bed to another, e.g. one with rails on the ceiling and hanging devices, a hanging and transporting apparatus, sheet moving systems for drawing and moving a sheet in horizontal direction, and air mattress moving systems for drawing and moving an air mattress in horizontal direction.
The above-mentioned systems can only shift a patient from one hospital bed to another, but they can't serve to turn and reposition a patient so as to prevent the patient from lying in one position for too long. Consequently, the caregivers still have to spend a lot of time and use a lot of strength to turn and reposition the patient manually, and there is still room for improvement in such systems.